New feature - total cost of ownership?
I was thinking about the cost per kilometre metric provided by Fuelly. Mine is presently $0.15c / km. And it got me wondering, what would that metric be, if it included all the non-fuel costs of running the car?
These costs are fairly easy to define: they include the initial cost of the car, plus annual costs (insurance and registration) plus ongoing maintenance + other costs (parking, if you lease a car spot, toll roads, etc).
It would be, in my opinion, incredibly valuable for Fuelly to provide a metric that incorporates these costs: what you might call a "total cost per mile (or km).
Obviously once you had this data other metrics could be easily provided = such as "total cost of ownership per month, per quarter etc".
How would this information be used? I can think of a few cases. Firstly someone wanting to compare the costs of running their car against the costs of the alternatives - public transport, a Zipcar-type service, or a lease-car, this data would be able to provide a meaningful useful comparison cost.
Similarly, someone considering a local journey - wondering should I take public transport of drive the car (I did this today), it would be interesting knowing the actual cost per kilometre of driving.
I recognise this wouldn't be trivial to implement, but I think it would potentially be a great feature for Fuelly.
Thanks
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